Interview With Filmmakers Julien Maury And Alexandre Bustillo For ‘The Soul Eater’

It’s Christmas next week so it’s the perfect time to watch one of my favorite Christmas movies, the New French Extremity film, Inside. Written and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, Inside is beautiful in its brutality and unrelenting in its violence but still hits all the right points for a fun holiday film – banging soundtrack and pretty lights all bathed in red… Blood red.

Because I love Inside so much, I am always happy to hear when Julien and Alexandre have a new movie coming. Released this month on VOD, the French-language The Soul Eater (Le mangeur d’âme) is a bit of a departure for the filmmaking pair in two big ways – they did not write it and it’s a police dark crime thriller, not a horror movie.

When violent and gruesome deaths start plaguing a small mountain village, an old legend about a malevolent creature resurfaces.

To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Julien and Alexandre about how they became attached to the project, how they began making movies together, horror films, and more!

PopHorror: Thank you guys so much. I’m a huge fan. I loved The Soul Eater so I’m super excited to talk to you both today.

Alexandre Bustillo: Thank you.

Julien Maury: Thank you.

PopHorror: So, what intrigued you about the script and how did you become involved with the project?

Alexandre Bustillo: It’s a very, very, very simple story, because in general, Julien and I have written our own stories, but we are totally open-minded to read some stories from other writers. And then one day a good friend of ours, Fabrice Lambot, a producer who worked with us on our third movie, Among the Living, came to us with the book and already a script was written by two young writers, and told us, “Guys, I love this book!” It was a French novel, a very well-known French novel that had big, big success in France. He asked us, “Do you want to read it? To read the book, and then the script? And then maybe you will be interested in doing this movie.” So, we read it and after reading the story, it was, of course, obvious for us that we wanted to do this movie because we fell in love with the story. It was all that we love in stories, and it was a subgenre that was new for us, the thriller. So, we said, “Yes, of course we want to do this movie.” It was very, very simple.

PopHorror: I love that, yes, it is a thriller, but I feel like it has the gore that I like to associate with you both, so I appreciate that. Was there anything that you were adamant about keeping in the film, no matter what?

Julien Maury: As we said, it’s the first time that we do a dark thriller and for us, we changed a lot of stuff from the original book and even, of course, the shooting script was kind of different from the one that we read in the first place. We wanted to have this story come into our universe and we’ve changed a lot of stuff like the ending and the way he is dealing with the creature, the soul eater itself, and even the characters. We’ve changed some characters. For us, telling a story through our eyes as horror fans is something natural, and it’s our DNA to tell a story by using the horror tools. We shot a lot of sequences with more gory elements and with fantasy elements like a ghost appearance and nightmare sequences, jump scares, and you know, all of it that is natural for us to deal with when we tell a story and during the editing process we realized that it was not this story. This one was a crime story, an investigation story. We were like, we are close to a horror movie and basically we’ve changed too much of the story and the balance wasn’t good. And so we decided to withdraw all of these elements that were kind of good special effects. They were good practical special effects and good jump scares but that wasn’t the movie. This was interesting for us because that was the first time that we were thinking this way and thinking about what is most important at that moment. Is it to have the audience jump in the seats, or to have the audience feel for the main character, and have feelings about her. Her trauma is really sad and I have empathy towards her and if we show the trauma, for example, the feeling is very different. And so we wanted to keep this movie as dark as possible, as nihilistic as possible, but to keep it fun to watch. We didn’t want the movie to be too hard for the audience, because we are dealing with such depressing subjects, like universal taboo as the child molesting. The challenge for us was really finding a good way to tell the story without giving up on what we are.

PopHorror: I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I’m glad that you didn’t go for jump scares in this one, because I feel like it would have changed the feeling of the movie because it’s not a horror, it is a thriller. It is about the investigation. I think jump scares would have made it completely different, and it would have felt different, and I think that would have left the audience confused as to what you were going for. 

Julien Maury: Yeah, that wasn’t the subject.

PopHorror: But you guys obviously know your way around horror. Inside is a near masterpiece. It cemented my love of French horror and the New French Extremity. But outside of making Inside, you guys work together on almost all of your projects. How did you decide that you wanted to make movies together?

Julien Maury: It was kind of obvious in a way because this one is our seventh feature, and we’ve worked together for like almost 20 years now. In the beginning, it’s honestly just about the connection. The meeting between two horror fans and how we imagined the way we could deal with our passion. I don’t know if that’s clear, but we decided to work together because it was obvious and our references and our desire of telling stories was so strong and so on the same page. It was like an epiphany when we first met and we didn’t know anyone in the industry, in the business. We are not like sons of people from the movie business. We don’t know anyone. So when we first met, we were like, okay, we need to shoot a movie feature. So maybe it’s going to take us years, but we will do it. You know we were in the same energy that Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson were in their beginnings. You know. They were like, “I want to do it. It’s going to take me like three or four years. I’m going to shoot in my backyard and do special effects in my kitchen, and the actors are going to be my friends, but I will do it.” And we were in that same energy. After that, it’s like a mix between determination and luck, but we’ve met the right person at the right time and so that was it, and Inside was on the tracks.

PopHorror: I love that so much. Why do you feel that people resonate with the horror genre?

Julien Maury: Do you have like two or three hours? That’s a hard one. I think it has something to do with primal fears and wanting to face it. You know, usually the horror genre is something that you want to experience as a teenager. We all know a lot of people that say, “Yeah, I used to watch a lot of horror movies when I was like 14, and you know, 14,15,16, but after that I grew up,” and I hate that because we feel like facing your fear by watching a horror movie is something that I think it’s the opposite of what we hear in the news and that the horror movies are changing people into violent persons. And I think the exact opposite. I think that when you, even as a director, put on screen your own deepest fear, it has a like the effect of therapy. It’s like you are forced to face your fear and this is something like very comforting aspects because horror fans have already faced what most people didn’t know how to react to the horror of life. I mean, most people, when they are facing the loss of someone, they are facing death, they are facing the disease and the atrocity of the world, they don’t know how to react. They are lost, and they fall into depression. And I think that us horror fans, we are more prepared for the horror of the world.

PopHorror: Yes! What about you, Alexandre?

Alexandre Bustillo: The same, because for me, a horror movie is like a roller coaster – you can watch the danger without being in danger. That’s the most important thing, because like Julien said, in real life with Julien, we hate violence. We hate blood and real horror stuff. We are absolutely not watching the news to be inspired. No, no, the news is horrible. And for us it’s only a movie, like you know, at the end of The Last House on the Left – don’t forget that it’s only a movie. You know what I mean? And that’s it.

PopHorror: It gives us a safe space to experience what scares us.

Alexandre Bustillo: Exactly!

PopHorror: Yeah, like. And I hear the roller coaster analogy a lot. And I like that. Yes, it’s a safe space. I have just one last question for you both. What is your favorite scary movie?

Alexandre Bustillo: Scary movie… We have a lot of a-

Julien Maury: Scary movies!

Alexandre Bustillo: Maybe my biggest fear on screen… I have two very big fears on screen at different hedges and totally different movies, but the first one is The Innocents by Jack Clayton because I remember when I watched it for the first time. I was maybe 16 years old, I think. I was also, of course, already a big fan of horror but the movie is so perfect and so incredible to bring fear with nothing. It’s maybe one of the most disturbing pictures I have ever seen in my life. And the other one is the original Ringu by Hideo Nakata. Of course, the Japanese version because when I watch it for the first time the J-horror was not well known all around the world and it was totally new, what the fuck, what is this movie? It’s so strange and I watch it without subtitles, so I didn’t understand anything of the story and the dialogues. Only the images were so disturbing. I was petrified by fear by watching Ringu. Those were my two big “wow!”

PopHorror: I love that.

Alexandre Bustillo: And you, Julien, what is your favorite scary movie?

Julien Maury: It’s always the same. I’m not original. I would say that the one that has had the most traumatic aspect on me was The Exorcist. Because the first time I was in contact with them for the film was only by watching small moments of it, because I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I was too young, and it was at night, and I sneaked into the corridor, and I had some glimpse of images, and I was really, really frightened about it. I came back to my room and I just heard the sound of it and just by hearing, you know the yell and the screams and the voice was something much more terrifying than watching the movie, I think, because I was imagining, you know, as a little boy, I was like what the fuck is going on in the living room? And I was like creating my own images and this was, I think something very traumatic because you cannot see more frightening images than the one that you create in your mind. That’s what Alfred Hitchcock said, you know, like don’t show the villain and just say that the monster is under the bed or in the cupboard or anything, and that’s far worse than showing the monster, you know, because the audience is going to imagine crazy things. 

PopHorror: Yup!

Julien Maury: Yeah. Classic shit, definitely The Exorcist.

Thank you so much to Julien and Alexandre for taking the time to speak with us. You can catch The Soul Eater on VOD now!